Items tagged with CES

If you woke up this morning thinking the world would be a better place if only another company would jump into the smartphone market, well, your wish is about to come true. Kodak is putting the word out that in intends to launch a range of Android-powered mobile devices with best-in-class image management software and features, which will make their debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month. This is an interesting play on Kodak's part. The company is obviously known for its deep roots in photography, which happens to be a critical part of the smartphone experience. With its...Read more...

Rumors were running rampant, and as it turns out, they were largely true. T-Mobile has made a huge move at CES 2014 this week, at a show where most of the other carriers have nearly bowed out completely. The company's new CEO has been on an #Uncarrier rampage of late, eliminating roaming fees for texting and data overseas; giving tablet users 200MB of free T-Mobile data each month; and now, paying off those much-hated ETFs. For years, mobile carriers in the U.S. have had customers by their wallets. Each discounted phone came with activation fees and a two-year agreement, which was mighty costly...Read more...

Ever since it debuted on Kickstarter, the makers of the Oculus Rift have promised to deliver the kind of VR experience that the late 90s and blithely promised and never created. Each developer kit or milestone has substantially improved on the underlying technology, with higher resolutions, better eye alignment, faster refresh rates, and less flickering or motion blur. The new developer kit debuting at CES 2014 is, according to multiple sources, truly amazing. New versions of the kit are using an OLED screen rather than the traditional LCD technology of previous variants. The motion blur that still...Read more...

Today is a big day for AMD. If you follow the company at all, you're probably aware that there's a new APU from AMD waiting in the wings. Today, AMD is disclosing more information about Kaveri, the first APU to support heterogeneous computing. Kaveri also includes a new CPU core, codenamed Steamroller, and the largest GPU we've seen in an integrated processor to date. This chip is particularly important for AMD because its the first major architecture update for AMD's big core program since Bulldozer launched in 2011... AMD CES 2014: Kaveri APU Is Imminent...Read more...

Today is a big day for AMD. If you follow the company at all, you're probably aware that there's a new APU from AMD waiting in the wings. Today, AMD is disclosing more information about Kaveri, the first APU to support heterogeneous computing. Kaveri also includes a new CPU core, codenamed Steamroller, and the largest GPU we've seen in an integrated processor to date. This chip is particularly important for AMD because its the first major architecture update for AMD's big core program since Bulldozer launched in 2011. This new APU includes the TrueAudio technology that AMD launched earlier...Read more...

NVIDIA's Jen-Hsun Huang took the stage at CES 2014 to discuss NVIDIA's overarching gaming technology efforts, starting with a discussion of PC gaming streaming courtesy of NVIDIA's Shield. We've discussed Shield's game streaming capability before -- it's easily one of the stronger selling points for the product. According to the NVIDIA CEO, the game streaming that the company showed at CES was actually being rendered from an NVIDIA GRID server that was currently located in France. The idea here? NVIDIA can render from thousands of miles away, push those frames to your PC or mobile device, and do...Read more...

NVIDIA's Jen-Hsun Huang took the stage at CES tonight to discuss NVIDIA's overarching gaming technology efforts, starting with a discussion of PC gaming streaming courtesy of NVIDIA's Shield. We've discussed Shield's game streaming capability before -- it's easily one of the stronger selling points for the product. According to the NVIDIA CEO, the game streaming that the company showed at CES was actually being rendered from an NVIDIA GRID server that was currently located in France. The idea here? NVIDIA can render from thousands of miles away, push those frames to your PC or mobile device, and...Read more...

Believe it or not, the 2014 edition of the International Consumer Electronics Show is about to begin, and companies far and wide are solidifying launch plans when things kick off in Las Vegas. Samsung is amongst the first to offer a teaser, showcasing its 2014 Smart TV line. Samsung’s voice interaction service, which understands natural languages, is currently available in 11 countries. In 2014, the service will expand into 12 new markets, making the service available in a total of 23 countries worldwide. Users can change the channel in one step – by simply saying the channel number....Read more...

We haven’t heard much from Canonical about its Ubuntu for mobile since its ill-fated $32 million crowdfunding attempt, but it appears that the company has finally found a hardware partner for its mobile operating system. Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth dropped the news to CNET: "We have concluded our first set of agreements to ship Ubuntu on mobile phones. We've shifted gears from 'making a concept' to 'it's going to ship.' That has a big impact on the team," he said. Shuttleworth declined to name the manufacturer, but he did say that Canonical is actively in talks with four major brands...Read more...

When Microsoft made the decision to forego exhibiting at this year's CES, I think the general reaction from the industry was one of confusion. After all, Microsoft has long been a major presenter at the event, sporting one of the biggest booths front and center. Stranger still was the fact that the company decided to pull out at a time when it should have been working hard to convince people that its products are worth getting excited over - Windows 8 released just three months earlier to much tepid reaction, after all. Not long after the last CES wrapped-up, Paul noted that Microsoft's presence...Read more...

We’ve all been eagerly anticipating the presumed launch of Valve’s Steam Box gaming console since last spring and especially after there was some buzz (and ultimately, misinformation) about the device at CES this year, but now it appears as though Valve is finally going to debut the device on Monday. The company put up a teaser site that reads, “The Steam universe is expanding in 2014”. Beyond that, all the site says is, “Last year, we shipped a software feature called Big Picture, a user-interface tailored for televisions and gamepads. This year we’ve been working...Read more...

Canonical is taking a progressive, innovative approach to its invasion of the mobile industry. We’ve seen its Ubuntu for mobile in action, and the OS is slick and smooth, but the company is working on hardware, too, which is taking the form of the Ubuntu Edge smartphone. It’s still a prototype, but the thing looks impressive; the look is classy, with understated, sharp slanted angles, and future models will be built of a single piece of textured metal. Canonical says that it will have a 4.5-inch display made from sapphire crystal instead of glass (which allegedly only diamonds can scratch),...Read more...

The portable gaming market has been evolving briskly lately, as just a few weeks ago at CES 2013, we got our first hands-on look at both the Razer Edge gaming tablet and NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD mobile gaming device. Now there’s another kid on the block called the Wikipad. The 7-inch tablet is similar to the aforementioned gaming devices in that it’s designed first and foremost for gaming and also has a controller attachment to give a more console-like experience. The Wikipad runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and has a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor (with 12-core GPU), 1280x800...Read more...

For the last several years, CNET has been coordinating the CES product awards at that big annual electronics show in Las Vegas (you may have heard it mentioned around here a few times), but that arrangement has abruptly ended. According to Boston.com, the Consumer Electronics Agency (CEA), which runs the show, will not be asking CNET back next year because it believes that CNET’s parent company, CBS Corp., interfered with this year’s award selection process. Apparently, CNET staffers wanted to give the coveted Best in Show award to Dish Network’s Hopper whole-home DVR with Sling...Read more...